( CNN ) Last weekend , a 17-year-old apparently committed suicide in Ohio . And because she was transgender , many assigned a political or social or religious narrative to her story before even fully recognizing her death . A disturbing trend when you consider the string of recent dramatic and , it must be said , senseless deaths that have crowded the nation 's headlines . Looking through the agenda-driven prisms that helped define 2014 , they all appear disconnected . But when we pause , we can see they are anything but . Consider what happened earlier this month , when Kathleen McCartney , president of Smith College in Northampton , Massachusetts , sent a campuswide email in support of students protesting grand jury decisions not to charge the police officers who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in Staten Island . In it she said : `` We are united in our insistence that all lives matter . '' Later , McCartney was forced to apologize . You see , because she did n't specifically say `` black lives matter , '' she was accused of minimizing the pain and experience that was specific to the black community . I would argue `` all lives matter '' is every bit as revolutionary of a rallying cry and should hardly be said in shame . I thought about her apology after a man who was reportedly mentally ill drove from Baltimore to Brooklyn and shot two police officers in the head while they were at work . And I 'm thinking about her apology now as my heart aches over the suicide of Leelah Alcorn , the teenager who took apparently took her life on Sunday . `` The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people are n't treated the way I was , they 're treated like humans , with valid feelings and human rights , '' she wrote on Tumblr hours before stepping in front of a tractor-trailer on Interstate 71 . She also wrote : `` my death needs to mean something , '' obviously feeling her life did not . If you fail to see the connection between Alcorn , the fallen police officers , Brown and Garner , then you are missing something important about what binds a society . Laws and culture form sturdy beams , but the foundation of civilization is empathy . It is a slender but invaluable thread that allows us to communicate with those who speak a different language , explains why men double over at the sight of a male being struck in the groin , why our own eyes fill with tears at others ' sorrow and loss and why laughter is contagious . Our innate ability to identify with the needs and experiences of others -- to have compassion , empathy -- is the very thing that makes us human . Thus , the less empathy we have for others -- the less `` all lives matter '' to us -- the less civilized we become . The less civilized we become , the less human we are . Of course , the notion that `` all lives matter '' does not speak directly to the implicit biases that have led to the criminal justice system 's mistreatment of people of color . It does not highlight the sacrifices law enforcers make or the dangers they face each day . `` All lives matter '' does not note the discrimination and ostracization of transgender people that apparently led to the torment felt by Leelah Alcorn -- discrimination and ostracization that even occurs within the larger lesbian , gay and bisexual community . But it does remind us that before we are black , white , Christian , liberal or gay , we are human . Because in the end , the lapses in humanity that led to each of the high-profile deaths that have rocked our culture may be different in their particulars , but they are the same in the pain experienced by loved ones left behind . Over my 20-plus years as a journalist , I have covered numerous deaths . I can tell you about the agony in the eyes of the mother of Matthew Shepard , the 21-year-old gay man who was pistol-whipped , tied to a fence and eventually died back in 1998 ; it is similar to the pain in the eyes of Trayvon Martin 's mother . The cries I heard at the memorial service for Michael Brown this past summer were as hard to hear as the cries I heard at a service for Wes Leonard , a 16-year-old who collapsed and died on his high school 's basketball court three years ago . Again , the circumstances surrounding each death are vastly different from one another . But when a parent buries a child , the hurt is hard to differentiate . There is a time to dissect mitigating circumstances , but it should not come before experiencing humanity and learning something from how we feel . It is a constant struggle to hold on to what connects us . Especially when so many forces -- politics , media , religion -- flood in to demonize our differences , alienate one group of people from another , drown our compassion and leave our very humanity gasping for air . A 17-year-old transgender girl took her own life during the holiday season . Before we point fingers assigning blame , can we at least pause long enough to think about the meaning of a girl 's lost life ? To mourn ? To feel ? To be human ?
LZ : Transgender teen killed self . Many call it social , political violence ; we can see humanity . He says in reaction to deaths of cops , Garner , Brown , empathy falls away , emotions take over . LZ : In these and teen 's deaths , we too often show weakness in crucial connection that connects us .