When she was hired as general manager of KPFK (90.7 FM), Eva Georgia appeared to be a walking trophy of progressive brownie points: a black lesbian with an almost cinematic personal story of facing persecution as a leftist radio activist in South Africa. In the summer of 2002, after highly charged internal struggles at KPFK’s parent network, Pacifica — firings, lawsuits, listener rebellions — Georgia told the Los Angeles Times she would run the station by respecting the “process of democracy and transparency.” But by the fall of 2002, Georgia’s staffers were in open revolt, claiming that democracy and transparency...