[5][6][4] Drabinski was an early member of Radical Reference, where she protested the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City and taught fact-checking workshops for independent journalists.

[13] In 2016, Drabinski co-chaired a colloquium on gender and sexuality in information studies with Baharak Yousefi and Tara Robertson.

[21] In July 2022, she ended her role as interim chief librarian but continued to work at CUNY's Mina Rees Library.

[27] In the fall of 2023 she was appointed associate professor at the Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies.

[31] After her election as ALA president in June 2022, Drabinski described herself in a later deleted tweet as a "Marxist lesbian" who believes in "collective power.

"[20] Following the tweet, Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the conservative nonprofit Moms for Liberty,[32] criticized supposed outside interference in libraries.

[20] In July 2023, the Montana State Library Commission voted 5-1-1 to withdraw from the ALA because of Drabinski's political beliefs.

[34][31][35] Prior to the decision, Darrell Ehrlick of The Daily Montanan criticized the Montana Commission for legitimizing stereotypes about lesbians and Marxists.

"[37] Branko Marcetic later argued in Jacobin that such votes and related efforts from nine Republican Freedom Caucuses across the U.S. to also withdraw from the ALA were examples of red-baiting and homophobic attacks against Drabinski.

[38][39] In an August 2023 interview, Drabinski stated that her tweet was an excited expression and celebration of two aspects of her identity which are important to her and often scrutinized.

She added that critiques of her beliefs are "organized pro-censorship efforts" by those who want to weaken support for "public institutions that enable access to information for everyone" and said that though her personal views are being targeted, her "personal agenda doesn’t drive the association" and that the driving force of its organizational agenda is helping everyone work together.

In June 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdowns, Drabinski and her partner, Karen Miller, a history professor at LaGuardia Community College and the CUNY Graduate Center,[47] launched Homeschool Co-op 2020.