In 1980, in
Philadelphia, he promoted
nuclear disarmament through the Friends Peace Committee, where he helped to found the
Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. Grassie was arrested in several non-violent
civil disobedience actions and was a symbolic
war tax resister. Grassie and David Falls, another employee of the Religious Society of Friends, a Quaker organization, refused to pay federal taxes on the grounds that it would support nuclear war, but a judge ruled, in a civil suit by the
Internal Revenue Service in 1990, that the church was obliged to enforce levies against the salaries of the two employees. A statement by the Friends Quaker religious organization said, "They.... are not tax evaders, but deeply religious and conscientiously motivated individuals who feel they cannot pay the military portion of their taxes without violating the central tenets of their religious faith." In 1987 and 1988, Grassie worked as a community organizer in southwest
Germantown, Philadelphia, and organized the "Three Hundred Anniversary Celebration of the Germantown Protest Against Slavery" in commemoration of the
first European protest against slavery in the New World (1688). The project was designed as a community development initiative and helped to catalyze a community revitalization project now known as "Freedom Square". == Academia ==