A coalition of influential political activists in Georgia that boosted turnout in a state that was crucial to Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 is now collectively refusing to attend the visit planned on Tuesday by the US president and Kamala Harris to speak on voting rights.

The group had previously warned the president and vice president that they needed to announce a specific plan to get national voting rights legislation passed or risk their high-profile trip to Atlanta being dismissed as “a waste of time”.

On Monday evening, the coalition of activist groups – Black Voters Matter, Galeo Impact Fund, New Georgia Project Action Fund, Asian American Advocacy Fund, Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council – along with James Woodall, the Georgia NAACP president, announced that “we will not be attending” when Biden and Harris give addresses on Tuesday afternoon.

“Instead of giving a speech tomorrow, the US Senate should be voting tomorrow. What we need now, rather than a visit from the president, vice-president and legislators is for the White House and Senate to remain in DC and act immediately to pass federal legislation to protect our freedom to vote,” the groups said in joint statement.

Biden and Harris have planned a joint visit to Atlanta to advocate for flagship bills, currently stalled in the US Senate, to protect voting rights, which are increasingly under threat across the country, including in Georgia.

But many Georgia activists and organizers have spoken out to make it clear they don’t support the leadership using the state and its civil rights legacy as “a photo-op” without a meaningful plan of legislative action.

“If this is just a rhetorical exercise, just an attempt to perform advocacy, then I think it might be a waste of time,” Nse Ufot, CEO of the New Georgia Project voting rights advocacy, told the Guardian prior to the news that the coalition of groups will stay away.

She said it was the work of local organizers that helped deliver the Democrats’ White House and Senate victories, and she’s pushing for the elimination of the filibuster rule that requires 60 senators to bring laws to a vote, while the Democrats only have 50 seats and Republicans won’t support the voting rights legislation.

“There needs to be a federal standard for elections or the 2022 midterms are going to be chaotic,” Ufot said.

Last Thursday the coalition of activists released a scorching letter warning the leaders not to travel without a “finalized plan” for new laws.

It noted that Georgia voters “made history” to flip the state blue in November 2020, the first time it put a Democrat in the White House since 1992, with a huge turnout from Black voters in particular, then also elected Georgia Democrats Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff to give the party the edge in the US Senate.

The letter said of those Georgia voters: “In return, a visit has been forced on them, requiring them to accept political platitudes and repetitious, bland promises. Such an empty gesture, without concrete action, without signs of real, tangible work, is unacceptable.

“As civil rights leaders and advocates, we reject any visit by President Biden that does not include an announcement of a finalized voting rights plan that will pass both chambers, not be stopped by the filibuster, and be signed into law.”

The bills blocked by Senate Republicans using the filibuster are the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.

The latter would create a “baseline national standard for voting access”, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

The former, named after the late Georgia congressman and civil rights activist, would restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibiting states with a history of voter suppression from making changes to voting laws without federal approval, a key provision removed by a 2013 supreme court decision.

Georgia passed a new voter restriction law in spring 2021 dubbed “Jim Crow in the 21st century” by Biden.

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer hopes to change the filibuster rules if necessary to pass national voting rights legislation. But he faces opposition from centrist Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who also stand in the way of Biden’s Build Back Better bill.

Cliff Albright, executive director of the Black Voters Matter Fund, said that potential speeches on Tuesday without a specific plan of action could send the message that the administration believes it’s possible to continue to “out-organize voter suppression”.

“That’s just a bad strategy,” Albright said. “It’s not that we don’t want the president talking about these issues, but we don’t want it to just be a photo-op.”

James Woodall, the Georgia NAACP president, said activists understand the challenges but it’s time for the White House to figure out how to make change.

“We understand civics. We get it. They’re not senators and there are processes in place, like the filibuster, that require reform. But, that’s not our job,” Woodall said.

“Our job was to get Ossoff and Warnock elected and to ensure that Donald Trump was not the president… Biden won and it was all because of what we did here in Georgia. Now, we’re asking them to do their part, which is to protect democracy.”

Atlanta’s Bishop Reginald Jackson of the AME church, who pushed Georgia-based Coca Cola and Delta Air Lines to criticize voter suppression, said he “strongly supports” the visit.

“They’ll be coming at a time when our democracy and its future is at great risk,” he said.

But Ufot warned that if election integrity isn’t protected in time for midterm elections: “We’re talking about losing a generation of voters who think this is a Banana republic and their vote doesn’t matter.”