Communities must come together to prosper

As a young man working part time in his father’s office, keeping track of what people owed when they weren’t able to pay for that day’s visit, Las Vegas Councilman Cedric Crear learned by example.

Dr. John Crear was just the second Black physician in Nevada, and he was never not busy. House calls. Random knocks on the door of his home from neighbors seeking help. If patients were ill, he’d take them food.

“He went out and worked every day,” Crear, 50, recalls. “He was a community servant. He gave away more free medical care than he took in for payment.”

A loose barter system emerged, with Dr. Crear’s patients helping out whenever he needed home or car repair in the Historic Westside.

“I’m a product of my environment,”

Crear says. “I’m a product of living in my community, being raised in my community and seeing how communities need to come together in order to prosper.”

Not content to pass that message down to just his daughters, Hagan and Kennedy, he’s spreading the word through mentorships and his Civic Engagement Day program. Since he began representing Ward 5 in 2018, Crear has welcomed more than 250 young constituents to City Hall, given them tours, bought them lunch and let them sit in on meetings. The program’s goal is to give the participants a vision of a better future.

“I always say this, whether I was in office or not, I would still be engaged in my community,” Crear says. “I just have a different platform that I’m able to execute on, which is powerful.”