There is a fundamental flaw in American society.

Every day we partake in the war on terror to ensure our safety and our own freedom. Our men and women are sent thousands of miles from home into hostile territories to risk their lives in order to combat what may or may not be a real threat.

We fight this war to make sure we keep our people safe in their homes. But America seems to have forgotten that many American citizens do not have homes in which to be safe.

Just more than five years have passed since Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans. In those five years, Americans have apparently forgotten the hardship and pain our own people endure.

Katrina forced more than 800,000 people from their homes, and many of those people have yet to return for fear of what they may find.

They would come back to find their homes completely destroyed or in shambles, without a means of paying for repairs.

Each day we spend more than $720 million dollars fighting a war thousands of miles from home. If we were to stop the fighting for one day, the money saved could combat the war we fight here. That money could pay for new homes for almost 6,500 families that were affected by Katrina, according to the American Friends Service Committee.

It would make a significant contribution, but there would still be many more families who could use this help.

Over fall break, one of Marquette’s student organizations, MARDI GRAS, gave me a fourth opportunity to travel with them to New Orleans and help rebuild one of the greatest cultural centers our nation has ever known.

I’m not talking about the French Quarter and Bourbon Street. That was taken care of just weeks after the Hurricane hit — a great PR move by the American government, but catastrophic for the city.

America sees the Quarter and believes the rest of the city is thriving as well. This, however, is not the case. The body looks pristine, but the organs are failing.

This place I am referring to has both the heart and the soul of New Orleans. It is where the levees failed, the section of the city that was hit hardest by Katrina: the Lower Ninth Ward.

Reverend Lonell Wright of All Souls Episcopal Church in the Lower Ninth is one of the best friends I have made in my trips to New Orleans.

The first time I met the Rev. in Dec. 2008, he told me that before the storm, the Lower Ninth was hopping with culture. Every day there would be neighbors sitting on porches, musicians playing instruments on street corners and kids playing ball.

Now, five years later, only about half of those people have returned, and they’ve returned to rundown, moldy or abandoned houses and businesses. Although more people are there than when I first went to New Orleans, the city still feels empty.

MARDI GRAS has rebuilt many houses and given families a place to call home again. I am never prouder to call myself a Marquette student than when I am in New Orleans. Complete strangers will come up to me and say, “Thank you Marquette,” even though I never had a chance to tell them where I was from.

We stick out like a sore thumb in New Orleans, but we fit right in. Last summer, a volunteer house was named after our university — Maison Marquette, which means “Marquette home.”

Throughout the chaos of the five years following Katrina, many still have not found a home in New Orleans. Marquette is among the lucky. Jesuits have always sought solidarity with the urban poor, and Marquette has found it in New Orleans.

The city is still a long way off from being what it once was. We fight a war overseas as well as one on our own soil, but wars cannot be easily won on two fronts.

New Orleans needs to know America has not forgotten it. Marquette is one of the organizations that continues to give the city hope, and I am grateful that we are part of it.