Statue of pioneer linked to California Gold Rush is removed

CUNEYT DIL Associated Press SACRAMENTO (AP) — A statue honoring a colonizer who laid claim to the land where the discovery of shiny flakes of gold sparked the California Gold Rush was removed Monday outside a hospital bearing his name in the state capital. Several dozen people cheered as a work crew lifted the statue of John Sutter — a 19th century European colonizer of California who enslaved Native Americans — off its pedestal outside Sutter Medical Center in the latest reckoning of historical figures being removed from public display. Across the U.S. and Europe, statues of Confederate officers and colonial figures are being toppled, sometimes forcibly by protesters, as the uproar over racism spreads after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. "OK, he's Sutter, b