SDS funded by the CPUSA and the RCP?

You've got to be kidding.

First, RCP didn't even exist until years after SDS imploded. Second, the CPUSA had a rival group, the DuBois Clubs, and never would have given us a dime.

This sounds like the garbage people get in their heads from reading too much of David Horowitz's website, or Ann Coulter. Please...

No, our 'secret' funders, to the extent that we had any, were good old fashioned US liberals.

In any case, I wish this new SDS effort well. Participatory democracy, as a core politics, is both radical and as American as apple pie. But it will have to set nostalgia aside and find its own voice for today. After all, SDS's politics were also very 'generational' and sought to create a 'new left' dinstinct from its elders.